


In The Flowers

by inbox



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alcohol, Flirting, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 20:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2242746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fallout Kink Meme prompt: what do the New Vegas companions get up to before Hoover Dam?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Flowers

"Didn't know you drank," said Boone. He's said that with every round, loud enough to be heard over the Wrangler's unenthusiastic singer crooning through some jazz standards, his elbows propped on the sticky bar top and his chin on his hand. Somewhere along the line he started ordering shots of vodka to go with their beers. Arcade hadn't been at all surprised when he appeared at his elbow, bellying up to the sticky bar and pushing enough caps over the bar to buy them both a drink.

It's been a bad week. They deserve a drink. They deserve a drink for what's happening tomorrow; a long walk to the Hoover Dam for Boone and a potential Freeside bloodbath for Arcade. 

"I do," said Arcade. "I did and I do. Drink, that is."

Boone toasts him with a beer in one hand and a shot in the other, and pounds back one and swigs on the other. He's got them out of order, beer foaming down his chin and vodka spilling on his fingers.

He laughs, and Gannon laughs, and behind the bar James Garett smiles at them and surreptitiously adds a few more caps to their boss' tab.

\--

It's late, or it's early, he can't really tell. Boone has his beret on the grimy little table and a glass of something deep amber on his knee, and Arcade keeps telling him how young he looks. Without his scowl and furrowed brow, Boone looks young. Or, Arcade thinks, he looks his age. Either, or. Maybe it was just the dim light and cheap wine doing the looking for him.

"Brahminshit." Boone looks at him from behind the rim of his glass as he takes a sip of his whisky and water, rolling it around his mouth before swallowing. "Reckon you say that to everyone."

"After a bottle of wine I'd say just about anything to anyone." Arcade lifts his glass in a silent toast, and the jazz singer up in the golden stage light gives him a practiced grin that doesn't reach his eyes.

"I'll take that," says Boone and laughs, a wheezy chuckle that sounds tragically unused to Arcade's ears. "Don't get many compliments. I'll take what I can get."

Boone drags his chair a little closer, near enough that their knees touch, and the wine and the music and Arcade's boney kneecap pressed against the muscle of Craig's thigh makes something deep in the pit of Arcade's stomach unfurl, warm and bright. He ignores it.

\--

Boone has packed his bags. He's ready for whatever is coming, and tells Gannon as much as they walk back to the gates of Vegas, close enough that their elbows jostle and their fingers brush. He's got a handgun on his hip, gleaming oily black and solid, and its length presses against Arcade's hip when they stop to look around a corner, keeping an eye out for predators. The red cross on Arcade's shoulder is protection enough most nights, but times are rough and people are getting desperate.

They're leaving tomorrow morning to make good time before the sun develops its bite, he tells Arcade, and then they'll step onto Hoover Dam the day after and that'll be it. His hand is on Arcade's elbow, big and warm, propelling him in the right direction.

Arcade looks up at the glowing neon lights welcoming them back to Vegas, and tells Boone to keep his aim sharp. Any other thoughts he has remain private and unvoiced, and he gets the impression that Boone is doing the same.

\--

They're in the shadows of the dead casino, silently waiting for an ancient elevator that takes forever to arrive, when Boone grabs his arm and pulls him off balance and kisses the corner of his mouth. His lips are dry and chapped, and the chaste brush of his lips is over before it starts.

"Sorry," says Boone, but he sounds anything but sorry and his hand is still on Arcade's forearm, bunching up the cotton of his coat between his fingertips. "Might've… misread."

Boone's nails are neatly clipped and there's not much dirt 'neath his fingertips, and Arcade stares at them dumbly while his brain catches up, turning over sluggish and slow.

"You caught me unaware," he says, eventually, more clipped and formal than the bad Shakespearean actors that toured New Vegas last year. "Um."

Boone lets him go, shoving his hands into his pockets and bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. "Can't wait to not ride this piece of shit again," he says after a while, nodding at the elevator doors. "Get out of this place. Afterwards."

_As long as you come back to Vegas sometime_ , Arcade tells him on autopilot, his thoughts still processing glacially slow. "Or Freeside. You know where I'll be."

"Face down in a pile of flowers," says Boone, and it takes Arcade a moment to realise that he's making a joke. He had no idea Boone had even been paying that much attention.

"Exactly," says Arcade. "That's me. Cutting up an entire landscape of flora and complaining about it."

The ride up is silent. They stand there, side by side on the faded carpet, and watch the floors tick by.

"You, uh. Before. You didn't misread the, uh, situation."

The walls of the elevator are mirrored, yellowed and pockmarked with decades of rust, and he watches his own reflection. He looks tired and nowhere near sober enough to be having this conversation, but Boone is staring at him intently, sunglasses off and his arms folded across his chest.

"Come see me," he finishes lamely. "After." After tomorrow, after the dust has settled, after Boone and Six come back to Vegas. He hopes they'll be on two feet. He hopes they don't come back in bags.

\--

The Courier is ready to leave by the time Arcade wakes up, yawning hugely and rubbing the grit from his eyes as he leans against the guest room door. Time to get moving, Courier keeps saying, testy and irritable. Time to start walking before the sun has a chance to lay some real heat into the ground, time to make good progress towards the huge looming inevitability that is Hoover Dam.

Arcade smooths down his shirt, crumpled and sweaty after he'd fallen asleep still wearing his clothes, and nods when Boone squeezes past him with a knapsack on his back and a rifle slung over his shoulder. His hand rests on Arcade's elbow for a moment before he's out in the hallway, pressing the elevator button with the side of his palm and shifting his weight from foot to foot, ready to leave. He looks better than Arcade feels, sober and clean shaven and purposeful in well-worn body armour. He looks like a solider. He is a soldier. Arcade is almost convinced that he and Courier both might make it back, whole and intact.

“See you in Freeside,” he says as the elevator creaks open, his voice pitched low and quiet. 

Boone gives him a long look, unreadable behind his sunglasses. “Yeah,” he says eventually, and Arcade could've sworn that the corner of his mouth lifted a little into something that is almost, maybe, possibly a brief grin. “Face down in the flowers.”


End file.
